One of Britain’s biggest house builders says the property market is 'encouraging' after Brexit

Taylor Wimpey, one of the UK's biggest housebuilders, is striking
a surprisingly upbeat tone in its half year results and is so far
shrugging off Britain's vote to leave the European Union with
ease.

In an update released on Wednesday, the FTSE 100 company says
that despite the vote to leave the EU, trading has so far
remained resilient and that there had been no discernible impact
from the referendum so far.

But Taylor Wimpey is largely confident about what comes next.
Online estate agent Rightmove on Wednesday also said it remains
confident about its future, regardless of the referendum.

Here are the key extracts from the Taylor Wimpey's statement
(emphasis ours):

"Whilst it is still too early to assess what long-term impact the
EU Referendum result will have on the UK housing market, there
has been no meaningful change to date, with
trading in the last month at a normal seasonal range with a net
private sales rate of 0.65. The net private sales rate for the
year to date (w/e 24 July 2016) is 0.77 (2015 equivalent period:
0.78).

"Since 24 June, the early forward confidence indicators amongst
homebuyers, together with the continued competitive lending by
mortgage providers, have been encouraging and support
confidence in the resilience of the UK housing market.
We are monitoring both our own internal measures of customer
confidence and external data closely."

While Taylor Wimpey is generally upbeat, it did caution that it
cannot predict the future, adding that the longer-term impact of
the referendum is uncertain.

The company put its money where its mouth is, confirming that it
will pay a special dividend of £300 million, or about £9.20 a
share, in July 2017, as well as an interim dividend of 0.53p a
share in October this year.

Taylor Wimpey's results in general were largely positive, with
the firm increasing profits and revenues from the same period in
2015. Here are some of the highlights from the half-year report:

Revenues up 9.1% to £1.46 billion from £1.34 billion in H1
2015;

Profits up 9.1%. to £279.1 million against 2015's £255.9
million;

Operating profit margin unchanged at 19.2%;

Earnings per share up from 5.8p to 6.6p;

Total return on net operating assets of 25.2% against 23.2%
in the first half of 2015.

Pre-tax profit improved to £80.6 million from £66.6 million
during the same six months in 2015;

Interim dividend to shareholders increased by 19% to 19p a
share.

It is still only one month since the referendum, but Taylor
Wimpey's strong results seem to corroborate the view of analysts
at Credit Suisse, who argued in a recent note that Britain's
housebuilders are
set to get a boost in the aftermath of Brexit.